McEwan's first novel concerns a family of abandoned children
coming to terms with life without their parents. It is about their
simultaneous growth into adults and regression as children. The
novel might indeed have been called the semen garden, concerned as
it is with creation (nature) and procreation (animal). The main
character is Jack, an adolescent who at the start of the novel
masturbates for the first time as his father has a heart-attack and
dies. The boy jacks off on to his hand and then watches the
ejaculated semen dry like cement: “As I watched, it dried to a
barely visible shiny crust which cracked when I flexed my wrist. I
decided not to wash it away.” Little in this book is washed away,
from dirt to guilt, but …

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Citation:
Childs, Peter. "The Cement Garden".
The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1289, accessed 03 March 2015.]

1289The Cement Garden3Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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